The Movie:
(this review is the same as the prior DVD edition's review - done in 2000 - aside from the different supplemental listing.)

After a string of failures that really didn't do much for her career, the likable Sandra Bullock came back quite well during the Christmas season with "Miss Congeniality", which eventually made it over 100 million at the box office. She's a fun, solid actress and it's a sign of how much we want to see her succeed that I think other actresses might not have been still on such solid ground after features like "Speed 2".

"Miss Congeniality" isn't a groundbreaking film, but it simply does well at what its asked to do - be funny. Here she plays Gracie Hart, a tomboy who beat up the other kids at recess and then turned herself into an FBI agent. After things don't go particularly well, she finds herself assigned to a beauty pageant to uncover the possibility of a terrorist threat. As Gracie is hardly a potential contestant at the begining, a consultant Vic Melling (Michael Caine) is called in to transform her from a grumpy agent to a well-dressed beauty. Only, they have to get past the pageant's leader (Candice Bergen) and its master of ceremonies (William Shatner) first.

The screenplay is by Marc Lawrence, a writer that I believe I said I'd hoped "would never write anything again" after the Bullock film "Forces Of Nature", but he's since improved and there's some very funny bits throughout "Congeniality". Although, if you listen to the commentary track on this DVD with Lawrence and Bullock, he apparently didn't write many of the best parts of the picture.

The film isn't without some problems - there's some stretches without laughs and times where the film doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, but the film is able to string enough amusing situations together to make the movie enjoyable. That, and there's some great actors in the mix to make the jokes work better than they might have been. This isn't a favorite Bullock performance, but she's good here. Shatner and Bergen (and especially Caine) are fine in supporting performances, as well. The film also boasts some great technical credits, such as cinematographer László Kovács("Ghostbusters", "My Best Friends Wedding").

Overall, "Miss Congeniality" works. It's an enjoyable little film that doesn't re-invent the genre, but brings enough good jokes and actors to the table to make it worthwhile.